Our Work

Safeguarding the landscapes, communities and heritage of the Piedmont by involving citizens in public policy and land conservation. Learn more about our work by browsing the subject areas below and find out how to get involved!

Limestone Geology and Sinkholes

Posted on by Gem Bingol

Limestone geology, also known as Karst, is quite prevalent in the eastern United States. Limestone often dissolves in water, creating voids where groundwater flows like an underground river –gnawing away rock over the eons.

The natural wearing away of limestone over the millenia creates fantastic caves, unique ecosystems and touristic wonders (think Luray Caverns). However, in developed areas, human activities and new development can accelerate the natural pace of erosion–causing sinkholes, threatening buildings and roads, and contaminating groundwater.

1,000 Acres of Jefferson County Preserved

Posted on by PEC

Members of the Carter family acted together in 2009 to protect nearly 1,000 acres of land in Albemarle County that has been in their family since 1730. The Carters’ ancestors were neighbors to the Jeffersons, with a plantation about seven miles from Monticello, and the 1792 home, Redlands, suggests a Jeffersonian influence. The house was built by Martin Thacker, who also built Monticello, and its plan resembles Thomas Jefferson’s unbuilt design for the Virginia governor’s mansion.

Wolftown Farm with Historic Round Barn Protected

Posted on by PEC

Joyce Gentry lives on the land where she lived as a child-a farm in Wolftown in Madison County, toward the foothills of the mountains, that has been in her family for generations. Mrs. Gentry, a retired math teacher, says, “I’ve lived on farms my whole life.” Her son and daughter-in-law Brad and Amy Gentry now raise beef cattle on the family farm-a 145 acre spread with a horizon full of mountain views.

Mrs. Gentry’s strong ties to the land motivated her to protect it with a conservation easement last year. “I’m trying to keep the countryside like it is,” she says.

Saving the Farm

Posted on by PEC

How conservation can help working farmers achieve their goals

David and Terry Ingram are father-son farmers who recently donated conservation easements on their farms in Brandy Station, in Culpeper County.

Brandy Station is a great place for farming, with rich soils and moderate slopes. In fact, a full two thirds of Culpeper County ranks as farmland of statewide importance.

Highway Through Keswick?

Posted on by PEC

Can the local community come up with a better plan for Routes 22 and 231 than VDOT’s plan to make it a highway?

The main road through Keswick in Albemarle County—Rtes. 22 and 231—runs through a landscape that Thomas Jefferson described as “the Eden of the United States”.  Today, a traveler on this road can experience a landscape much like the one Jefferson and others of his generation saw—open farmland rising up to woodlands on the gentle slopes of the Southwest Mountains.  What will it be like to travel on this road in 20 years or 50 years or 100 years?  It’s an open question.

Unison Historic District Offers a Window to the Civil War

Posted on by PEC

The village of Unison in western Loudoun, as if charmed in some way to keep from changing, is a quiet hamlet of well-kept old buildings, with many farmhouses, barns and churches that measure their age in centuries.  They are settled into a landscape of farm fields and stone walls, where the curving hills and stands of trees give way, in their own rhythm, to views of the calm blue line of mountains on the western horizon. 

It’s the roads in Unison that historians get most excited about, says Mitch Diamond of the Unison Preservation Society, which is leading efforts to list this area as a historic district on the state and national registers of historic places.

Victory at Wilderness Battlefield

Posted on by PEC

In a dramatic win for historic preservation, after three years of controversy, Walmart has dropped its plans to build a Supercenter at the edge of Wilderness Battlefield in Orange County. On the first day of a court case contesting Orange County’s decision to approve the big-box store, Walmart made a surprise announcement — that it had reversed its course, deciding not to build on the historic property but to preserve it.

Protecting the Cedar Run Watershed

Posted on by PEC

When Mike and Margrete Stevens first came to Fauquier County eighteen years ago, as the new owners of Bonny Brook Farm, near Warrenton, they made friends with their neighbors Julian and Sue Scheer and Hilary and Rich Gerhardt (the Scheers’ daughter and son-in-law). This friendship with a family of dedicated conservationists led the Stevens to start hosting a wildflower walk on their land each April, as a sky-colored carpet of Virginia Bluebells blossoms along Cedar Run.